by Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

by Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

AUBURN, N.Y. -- This small city in Upstate New York is ready to promote the story of Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad conductor who led hundreds of slaves to freedom.

Tubman spent the last 50 years of her life in Auburn, settling here with her second husband and running a home for the aged.

Now, city leaders are marking a century since Tubman died here at 93 or so -- historians aren't sure of her age -- on March 10, 1913. There will be a symposium at Cayuga Community College, a wreath-laying at her grave, a pilgrimage to the site where she lived and more.

Local Tubman supporters are hoping they can move people to see her as they do -- strong, fearless, compassionate -- and in the process bring visitors to this Finger Lakes community of 28,000 people about 30 miles southwest of Syracuse. They're also hoping to broaden what the public knows about the escaped slave who also served as a Civil War spy.

"We really want to do things that will really raise people's levels of awareness," says Laurel Ulyette, organizer of the Harriet Tubman Boosters Club, a 60-year-old Auburn group that fell dormant but came back to life a couple of years ago. "I just believe it's the right thing and it's something that has to happen."

The group wants to draw visitors to, among other places, a site with ties to Tubman that is owned by the AME Zion Church.The site includes Tubman's house, the building that was the residence for the aged and a visitors' center. Also in Auburn is a one-room church building where Tubman worshiped after she moved to the city in 1857.

Tubman grew up in slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore; a brutal beating at 12 left her with a permanent seizure disorder. As a young woman, she escaped with the help of a white neighbor who gave her names of people who would hide her during her travels north.

From a base in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, Tubman went back for members of her family and other slaves, making the trip about 20 times to lead more people to freedom. They traveled at night along back roads and waterways, and historians say Tubman would pull a gun on anyone who threatened to back out.

While she was away from Maryland, her first husband took another wife.

She organized a network of Union Army scouts and spies during the Civil War and led troops in the Combahee River expedition in a raid that freed more than 750 slaves.

In 1857, she put down roots in Auburn. Local resident William Seward, President Lincoln's secretary of State, was an admirer who had helped house fugitive slaves. He sold her the property for a small price. She is buried in the city's Fort Hill Cemetery.

"Harriet Tubman is an international inspiration, and she's from here," says William Berry, publisher of Aaduna, a literary magazine. "She's somebody that everybody is willing to embrace."

"She's been largely admired but still a bit overlooked" because her accomplishments after the Underground Railroad are less well-known, says Karen Hill, president and CEO of the Harriet Tubman Home. "We're hoping this 100th anniversary will shine a bright light on Tubman's leadership, her deep abiding faith and her belief in the promise of America."

At a recent meeting of Auburn leaders whose organizations are hosting events to promote the anniversary, Paul Carter, site manager of the Harriet Tubman Home site, said the plans should generate tourism dollars.

"This should be a mecca for tourists," Carter said. "Believe me, we need the economic boost."

Tubman's story is just a piece of a long history of abolitionism and activism in this area. Abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass ran his newspaper, The North Star, in Rochester, where he is buried. The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention launched the women's rights movement.

In modern times, Auburn has been divided over Tubman. Proposals to name streets or public schools after her went nowhere. Alger says some of the divisions come from the dynamics of the Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison that, like many such facilities throughout Upstate New York, houses many African-American men from New York City but is staffed mainly by whites.

"That builds a lot of generational racism at the dinner table," Alger says.

Pauline Copes-Johnson, Tubman's 85-year-old great-grandniece, is a life-long Auburn resident but says she knew nothing of Tubman or their connection until she was 25, when an aunt told her about their ancestor. Copes-Johnson speculates that her parents, deceased by then, had followed a long-standing practice of not discussing older relatives who may have been escaped slaves.

The retired office worker travels the globe speaking about Tubman. She says that after her conversation with her aunt, she began doing research at the library and the Cayuga County Courthouse. She learned that Tubman was a 4-foot-10 spitfire who sold vegetables to operate her home for the aged and struggled to pay Seward the note on her property.

"She was a compassionate person," Copes-Johnson says. "She said it wasn't right for one race to own another. I resent how they treated her. It was like a living hell," she says of Tubman's time in slavery.

Rosemarie Romano, a member of the boosters club and co-chair of the planning committee for the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium scheduled for Nov. 8 and 9 at Cayuga Community College, says people should remember, "She never gave up, and she started out with so many obstacles against her."

The recognition in Auburn will be among commemorations around the country. On Sunday in Delaware, the Harriet Tubman Journey will include a relay run and a motorcycle ride tracing a path between known Underground Railroad sites in Delaware.

GirlTrek, a non-profit organization that promotes healthy living for African-American women and girls, plans 100-minute walks to take place across the country Sunday. In Dorchester County, Md., where Tubman was born, ground will be broken Saturday on the 17-acre Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park, a site due to open next year.

Democratic Sens. Benjamin Cardin and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland have introduced legislation to establish national parks at the site of Tubman's home in Auburn and another site in Cambridge, Md., and Reps. Dan Maffei, a New York Democrat, and Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, have introduced the House version.

Carter, the site manager of the Harriet Tubman Home, said, "She was a woman who knew it was better to live for a cause than just because."